Course Title Introduction to Business

Course Length 6 weeks

Target Audience Front Line Managers, Supervisors and Businesspersons

Language of Instruction Material is in English. Explanation and discussions are in English/Urdu.

Course Description

In this course students will focus on:

 Economic and Ethical role of a business unit through better financial performance and fulfilling social responsibility.

 Identifying Key Factors Internal to the organization – strengths, resources, capabilities that can be capitalized and weaknesses that can be overcome
for sustainability and growth.

 Natural, societal and industrial (competition) are the external Factors which can have a positive or negative impact on the overall performance of
the organization. The students will learn to identify opportunities and threats to remain proactive in the decision-making process.

 For long-term sustainability and growth, looking beyond convention and striving to create untapped free space with no competition is the key to
success – the Blue Ocean Strategy.

Course Learning Outcomes

LO1:  Understanding the role of Business Unit in society.

 Drawing analogy of business growth with progression of business forms.

LO2:  Learning how an organization works through brick and mortar, e-commerce and services setup.
 Perceive how organizational needs necessitate creation of departments for achieving goals.
LO3:  Learning how functions perform in harmony to achieve set goals.
 Capitalizing on the strengths and overcoming weaknesses.

LO4:  Familiarizing with varying roles of functions at different trajectory points of PLC.
 Understanding the pre-dominant role of the marketing function. Knowing the benchmark of break-even point and assessing effort to be
put in for steering the organization into profit domain.

LO5:  Segregating opportunities to gain advantages and turning threats into viable opportunities.

LO6:  Putting the SWOT together for short-term planning and implementation.

LO7:  Understanding thinking out of the box and entering into new domains of untapped market space with no competition.

Lecture Module Name Key Concepts/Topics Covered

1 Business Unit’s role in society  Social standing of a business unit

 Business Forms: Sole Proprietorship, Proprietorship,

Partnership, Corporation, LLC

 Carroll’s four responsibilities of business: Economic, Legal,

Ethical, Discretionary

2 How businesses make money  Business Models

 Formation of departments/ functions for a manufacturing/

services setup

3, 4 Organizational analysis – Internal Factors  Organizational structure

 Line and staff functions

  Mission statement

 Goals and objectives

 Strengths and weaknesses (SW)

 Resource/ capabilities / competencies

5, 6 Role of Line and Staff Functions primarily “The Marketing Function”  Product lifecycle (PLC)

 Reverse Positioning and Product Extension

 Fragmented and Consolidated industry in relation to PLC

 Role of functions with PLC framework in context

 STP, marketing mix, competitive scope, competitive

position, Break-Even Analysis (BEA)

7 Harnessing external factors to organizational advantages  External Scanning/ Opportunities and Threats (OT)

 Natural factors

 Societal factors

 Trade and Industry (Competition)

 Porter’s Competitive Model

8 Crafting the Business Plan  Situational analysis

 Matching external opportunities with internal strengths and

getting around external threats and internal weaknesses

 Integrating SWOT to prepare the business plan

9 Creating new markets through Blue Ocean Strategy – the way forward  How to come out of Red Ocean and avoid head-to-head
competition?

 How to make co-existence of differentiation and low-cost

possible?

 Looking across alternatives, strategic groups, buyer groups

for new market space